


Labyrinthine

by thistledome



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF Stiles Stilinski, Goblins, Human Derek Hale, M/M, Magic, POV Alternating, Pop Culture, The Labyrinth - Freeform, goblin king - freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-24 07:01:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistledome/pseuds/thistledome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jackson accidentally has Stiles spirited away by the Goblin King - who doesn't even look like David Bowie - Derek sacrifices himself to save him. He makes a trade with the Goblin King: his wolf, the thing that makes him who he is, for Stiles.</p>
<p>With no alpha to lead them, and Derek too caught up in himself, the pack slowly begins to fall apart. Everyone is angry. Especially Stiles. So Stiles sets out to make things right again and disappears back into the Goblin King's labyrinth in the hopes of finding what remains of the pack's alpha.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Deal

**Author's Note:**

> It is 1:30am and this is the first Teen Wolf fic I've ever written so please excuse me while I flail around hopelessly.

It’s probably one of the dumbest things he’s ever said, and that includes the time he’d admitted to Kate, in detail, the days and times the Hale house was full of pack members. But then, Derek’s never been a big one for words, so he’s caught a little off guard. What he should have said goes something along the lines of, ‘Give me back my pack member and get out of my territory before I gut you with my claws.’ Because that’s the sort of thing you say at a time like this, in the middle of the forest, facing down the Goblin King himself; the Goblin King who decided to take Jackson’s words literally and spirit Stiles away to his castle, where Stiles will be trapped forever and then eventually become the world’s most annoyingly mouthy goblin.

What he says instead is, ‘You don’t look anything like David Bowie.’

-

It might help if he starts at the beginning.

The beginning, if there is one, is when Erica and Boyd arrive back in town after three days, looking battered and bruised and sorry for themselves, and they throw themselves at Derek’s feet and beg for him to take them back, to make them pack again. Derek sees the way they’re smarting, sees the claw marks up Erica’s bare arms and the bite at the junction of Boyd’s throat, and he feels anger roiling up inside him. Because as much as Erica and Boyd left him, he made these betas, and he’ll always feel the pull to have them within his reach, to care for them and protect them. And if the marks left on them are healing barely faster than human pace, it means they’ve had a run in with the alpha pack drawing in on them. Which Derek drew the attention of. So once again, Derek is at fault.

Derek takes them in, and for days his two betas settle, listless and whimpering, on the makeshift mattress of a bed in one of the rail cars within the depot. Isaac plays nurse with great gusto, a look on his face like he can’t believe the family is all back together (especially after the afternoon where Derek had admitted, quietly, that he wasn’t sure they were coming back). Peter occasionally makes an appearance, as much as Derek would rather he didn’t, to coo and look smug, and make biting comments about how Derek makes a fine pappy for his pups. He does hand over a first aid kid, however, right before Derek throws him out the first time, so at least he’s not _all_ cutting sarcasm.

Derek drops by Scott’s house one afternoon and lets him know, begrudgingly, that his pack members have returned. He wouldn’t usually, doesn’t have to, even, except that Scott is the type to stick his nose in other people’s business because he likes to be a hero, and sometimes probably just to spite Derek.

It’s not that Derek didn’t care when they left, because he did. It had been like a huge hole tearing in him when they’d come to him and said they were leaving. He was finally starting to rebuild everything and then it had struck him, like the house falling down on his head, that he’d done little more than gather pawns, hadn’t been the alpha he should have been. The alpha Laura would have been. And that had been a wake up call like a kick in the face. Scott being Scott wasn’t helping.

So he tells Scott because then Scott will get off his fucking back – at least about that, but there’s always something with Scott – and he knew that Scott would tell Stiles who would tell… actually, no, Stiles wouldn’t have anyone to tell, except if Stiles found the need to come around and tell Derek _off_.

Which he does, because this is Stiles.

He’s all, they need to be with their families, and they need proper medical attention, and this isn’t the place to heal anyone, I mean, I’m probably getting herpes just standing here Derek, and you should have told us sooner, and there are missing persons reports that have been filed, and my father is looking for someone to blame here and you’re already on the persons of interest list Derek, you should have considered that, and that mattress is covered in mould, you’re probably making them sicker, and when was the last time you bathed, by the way, because you are _rank_ , Derek, I mean, I can smell you from my bedroom across town.

And then one thing leads to another and Erica and Boyd are reunited with their families, and there’s this horrible, disjointed lie about running away and being attacked by mountain lions that no one falls for, especially the sheriff. Then Derek finds himself with an apartment for him an Isaac to live in, and then Peter’s moving in as well, and then Boyd and Erica are around all the time, and then Scott and Stiles are too, and then Jackson, for some reason, and it’s in earnest, and Derek doesn’t trust that in the slightest.

But there he is, like a walking Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue, making smarmy comments and smelling like hair gel and ridiculously expensive cologne. And like his girlfriend too, that Lydia chick that Stiles is hot for. And also like he’s very, very lost, which is just another thing to make Derek uneasy. But he starts rocking up anyway, at first just occasionally, shooting Scott and Stiles angry, resentful glances (most of which Derek shares, but for entirely different reasons), and then he starts arriving with the others like clockwork, and before Derek knows it they have a routine after school where they do drills out in the forest by the Hale house, and Stiles sits by a tree doing his homework, making pop culture references that Derek only follows half of the time, and then they go to Derek’s house and eat everything in his fridge, and on occasional Saturdays they settle in his living room on his second hand sofa and his flimsy Ikea futon that always creaks when four of them pile on it, and they watch the movies they all bring over.

A whole year goes by, and the alpha pack comes and goes with little more than a territory pissing contest to show for it, and Derek realises one afternoon as they’re milling around his TV that this is pack life. He’d fallen back into it without even realising. They’re a real pack now: alpha, and betas, and three humans in the ranks – four if you count Allison, who spends as much time amongst the pack as Lydia does, even if she spends it skirting a wide birth around Derek. He’s finally filling Laura’s shoes properly, and for the first time in years he feels almost at peace with himself. There are parts of him that will never fix, not completely anyway, because parts of who Derek is now is shattered glass underfoot. But he has a family again. A home. And even if it’s a replacement, at least it’s better than no family at all.

So that’s what they do. That’s who they are. Training and feasting and movies. 

Erica brings thinly-veiled rom coms and tearjerker movies that make all the guys roll their eyes, but sometimes she’ll sneak in an indie thriller or an old classic. Jackson brings sport movies and mind numbing blockbuster action. Boyd brings black comedies, the sneaky kind that are wickedly funny but also willing and brave enough to make dead baby jokes, and Derek wasn’t expecting that, but it’s a pleasant surprise. Lydia only has any interest in movies if the actors are attractive, so there’s a lot of Ryan Gosling and Tom Hardy flicks, sometimes a Joseph Gordon Levitt shoved in there for posterity. She always has _The Notebook_ with her, though, as if it’s a staple in her purse like lip gloss and spare change. Danny downloads anything and everything out of boredom, but most of the time will have only watched the first ten minutes of anything, so there’s no knowing what to expect from him. Allison is a serial TV person, because she doesn’t like to sit and watch for more than an hour at a time. So she’ll bring round a season of something, _The Gilmore Girls_ or _Gossip Girl_ or _Veronica Mars_ , but doesn’t feel compelled to push any of them in particular. Scott brings dumb buddy comedies and more blockbuster action movies. Stiles brings sci-fi or tragically funny B grade movies like _Sharktopus_ and _Iron Sky_ , or schlocky horror movies, and sometimes cult classics.

One time, Stiles brings a bunch of Jim Henson movies. There are a couple of Muppet movies – _The Muppets take Manhattan_ , and _The Muppet Movie_ , and that recent one with Jason Segel – and _The Dark Crystal_ , _The Witches_ , and _The Labyrinth_. They’re movies that Derek watched as a kid, and it’s weird, to think of the parallels between his parents showing them to him and then him sharing them with his pack, but it’s a parallel that he kind of likes; that feels right, comfortable. So he picks up _The Labyrinth_ , because it’s the one on top, and he’d had a crush on Jennifer Connelly when he was only a little younger than his betas are now, and he sticks it on before anyone can complain.

Except they do, because Scott has the new Jason Bourne flick that he’s been waiting to watch with everyone, and Boyd saw this as a kid and thought it was creepy, and Isaac has an intense disliking for puppets, and Jackson doesn’t want to watch a stupid kid’s film, and Erica and Lydia (and secretly Danny and Allison) will only be interested when they see David Bowie in a codpiece, and all the while Stiles is following Jennifer Connelly line for line and snarking about how she can never remember the last line of the speech like it’s _so_ hard.

Peter, for the record, sits opposite Derek, smirking like the arsehole that he is.

And then they get to the scene where Connelly wishes away her baby brother, and Stiles still won’t shut up, even though everyone else has settled in, and Jackson, in all his wisdom, rolls his eyes and says, ‘God, Stiles, I wish the goblins would take _you_ away right now.’

-

So, back to the Goblin King.

‘You don’t look anything like David Bowie,’ says Derek.

The Goblin King laughs raucously, like he hasn’t heard that one before, or at least not from an alpha werewolf. He is a tall, willow reed of a man, like Skeleton Jack bending in the breeze. His face is hauntingly beautiful, neither young nor old, but incredibly ancient. Derek is reminded of the pictures of the fae in his mother’s enormous book collection in the old house. But where the fae drawings were long and sharply angular, the Goblin King is curved, coiled, and his bones aren’t jagged planes as much as jutting knobs; his elbows, his knees, the knots of his spine. His rib cage jangles hollowly when he shifts.

‘I’m not one for dramatics, werewolf,’ says the Goblin King, but he slides across the forest floor on flat feet rather than taking steps. ‘Although I can be persuaded, if the flair is to my liking.’

Derek wants to roll his eyes at that. He’s just chased this Goblin King half way across his territory at full speed on hands and feet, his betas just paces behind him, and all for the sake of the King’s so-called lack of dramatic flair. Derek doesn’t want to chase this pompous twig in a wig. He wants to rip its throat out.

‘I don’t want flair,’ grinds Derek past his fangs. ‘I want Stiles back.’

The Goblin King seems to pause in consideration, but it’s an act. He makes slow, well-played movements with his hands, and then steps down onto the forest floor. He makes a circle of Derek, his eyes wandering out into the trees beyond, where Derek’s pack are waiting.

The Goblin King doesn’t smell even remotely human. He smells biting bright like sunshine and sweet like rotting fruit. But there’s something beyond that as well, like a scent masked, like the absence of anything. He has three hearts; the first is fast like a hummingbird, the second calculated as a sleeping human’s, the last achingly slow. The sound is mesmerising, and Derek has to focus on the cold ground under his clawed feet, and the bite of the wind on his skin, and the tingle in the back of his skull of breached territory to keep himself in check.

The Goblin King stops in front of Derek. His skin is sallow up close, and his blue eyes are more grey. When he takes a step back Derek takes note of a goblin, an ugly, gnarled little beast that’s as tall as knee-height, climb out of the King’s shadow like it’s climbing out of a whole in the ground. It scampers away into the forest unchecked.

‘Ay,’ says the Goblin King. ‘There’s the rub.’

Oh, wonderful. A Goblin King that quotes Shakespeare. This guy must have this Give Me Back My XYZ conversation memorised by now. And so he’s playing, acting like it’s a game to Derek. Like this is hide and seek, not life and death.

‘You see,’ says the King, ‘this world owes me penance. You beta asked a favour of me – a favour I am more than willing to fulfil. I’m not a harsh man, werewolf. If something is asked of me, and I can do it, it will be done. But, as the human saying goes, there’s no such thing as a free meal. A favour done is a favour owed.’

‘What payment do you need?’ asks Derek, but he’s seen this already. He knows the answer even as he asks.

There’s a twitch at the corner of the Goblin King’s wide mouth. He’s enjoying this far too much. ‘The boy was payment enough.’

Derek feels the alpha in him twist, grind underneath his rib cage. Stiles wasn’t Jackson’s to offer. Stiles is a member of Derek’s pack, so if anyone could offer him to any King it’s Derek. More importantly, there’s a missing piece in Derek’s pack now, and he’s not comfortable letting it sit misplaced. Stiles is Derek’s – his responsibility, his pack member, his human. Derek wants him back.

‘What use do you have with a human pack member?’ asks Derek. ‘Surely if you wanted a member of my pack you would have taken a werewolf.’

‘A werewolf wasn’t offered,’ replies the Goblin King easily. ‘And his status within your little pack is no concern of mine. It’s his innocence I want.’

If Stiles were here, he would make a crack about how much of a cliché that is, right there. Or about how everyone wants him and yet he never seems to get any. Derek doesn’t really understand the whole virginity means innocence and purity thing, but then again, he’s a werewolf, so he’s never been pure, even before he lost his innocence. There’s nothing more in the world he loves than being a werewolf, because it makes him who he is more than anything, because it’s the thing above anything else that he carries that came to him from his lost family. He treasures what he is. But he understands how it taints his humanity in the eyes of the supernatural. He’s part human, part monster. Sometimes he can understand why the hunters think he’s an abomination.

Derek never liked that word. He doesn’t agree with how it sits in his head. But Stiles had said it once, in reference to the kanima, and he’d said it like Derek was right and whole and not nearly as messed up as he feels. He’s not a distortion. He’s not an abomination. This innocence thing is bullshit.

‘You want to make him a goblin,’ says Derek, and it’s a statement, not a question. Because what else is the Goblin King going to do with innocence?

‘Clever,’ says the King. ‘Yes, I do. You see, Goblin kind are not born, but made, like your kind.’

‘I’m a born werewolf,’ snaps Derek, sharper than he planned.

The Goblin King quirks an eyebrow, and the look on his face is dangerous. The pause before he speak is too long not to be calculating. ‘Maybe, but if you go back far enough, one of your descendants must have been a human and was turned. You cannot be both man and wolf by nature. And a goblin cannot be conceived.’

‘That’s perversion,’ snaps Derek.

‘Is it any more perverted than what you did to the humans you turned?’ The Goblin King has a spark in his eye. He wanders past Derek and peers through the dark at Derek’s betas. It’s unsettling, as if he’s judging them and finding them all wanting. Deciding here and now just how unworthy Derek’s pack is – and Derek doesn’t like it.

‘Usually I’m fonder of small children,’ says the King. ‘The younger the better. They’re a cleaner slate – more easily influenced, you understand. But the boy offered to me is untouched by your kind, and untouched by humans in all the ways it counts. And he’s clever – certainly more clever than you.’ At this the Goblin King turns back to Derek, his shiny shoes clean of mud and grit. ‘It’s unfortunate how much sway you’ve had over him, but I can work with what I have. And I have a feeling he will make a fine goblin; charming, witty, sharp and bright as a pin. I’ll have fun _perverting_ him.’ 

Derek feels himself getting angry again, and he has to clench his fists tight not to lash out. He’s in control of his wolf, though. It settles in his chest, however uneasy, growling a low rumble. Derek’s eyes flash, the red there sunk deep. He wants to rip the Goblin King’s skull from his frame, wants to use his finger bones to pick the meet from Derek’s teeth. Wants to shred him like paper under the light of the moon and feast on his grizzled flesh. He hears his betas stir at the way his rage is simmering. If he were to throw back his head and howl, they would join him so their voices became one. If he were to shift fully they would shift with him. If he were to eat the Goblin King whole, his betas would gnaw on the gizzards, the tendons, the bones.

‘So, what now?’ asks the King. He raises his arms high in question. ‘Are we here to philosophise, werewolf, or do you want to make a deal?’

Derek pauses at that. He wonders if the King is doing this because he wants something from Derek. If he doesn’t want Stiles, but something else, something more important. He wouldn’t ask otherwise. If he knows there’s nothing Derek can give – and there’s so little Derek has to offer – then why would he allow Derek the opportunity?

It’s a trap. It has to be. But Derek has no choice.

‘I want to make a deal,’ says Derek, slow and careful like he’s walking over eggshells. ‘For Stiles.’

It’s instantaneous. It’s as if as soon as the words leave Derek’s mouth the fragile tension holding this bargain together twangs violently and sends the air around them shuddering. The Goblin King was never a spring-loaded weapon, but he becomes harsh-edged and ragged, like he could pierce any eye turned towards him. He’s not a steeple-fingered gentleman in shiny shoes and a three piece suit, but one of his own – a goblin, stretched out till he’s paper thin, a thing that ripples and shimmers and jolts with energy. He’s like murder and violence and screaming. This is what the Goblin King really looks like, and it’s horrible and awesome.

‘Who says I’m interested in what you have to offer?’

It’s over in an instant – faster than that, more like blinking. One second Derek has been sucked into the wilderness and before it ticks over he’s back in the forest, the shiny-sharp King leering manically. It takes a moment for Derek to realise he spoke, and even longer to register it as the insult that it is.

‘I don’t want to fuck around,’ bites back Derek, and he can feel the way he’s fallen into the King’s snare, because now he’s done the stupid thing and put a price on Stiles’ head. His heart sinks in his chest. Somewhere behind him, Isaac whines bitterly. Scott shifts, uneasy. Peter’s heart is pounding like a frightened rabbit, as is Jackson’s. But Derek presses on, because it’s a life he’s bargaining for. ‘You want something from me. Tell me what it is.’

The Goblin King smiles, and it’s like cracked porcelain. There is a goblin there, underneath the milky skin, and it has gnarled hands and feet and teeth, and its eyes are beady black, and its face is grubby, and its hair is like strings of soot. It is a gnashing maw, a cruel smirk, a shriek of twisted horror.

‘You,’ says the King. ‘I want you.’

It radiates in the silence, like ripples in a pool of water. It washes over Derek, over his pack, over the forest around them. That word, round and full, bleeding into the hush. Derek wants to be sick. His heart is beating its way out of his chest.

‘You said you didn’t want a werewolf,’ he gulps, and he struggles around his fangs. The urgent panic is going to set him off. He has to get angry, has to get under control.

‘I said the boy’s part in your pack didn’t matter,’ says the Goblin King around his smirk. And it was a lie, Derek realises, even if he couldn’t hear it at the time. ‘Not that I didn’t want one. And just to be clear,’ he adds, hands flippant, ‘when I say you, I mean the wolf. Like you said, it’s a born wolf. And it’s an alpha. That could be… useful.’ The last word comes out like a spiteful drawl, like Derek’s dog is down and out and the Goblin King is still kicking it to within an inch of his life. Which isn’t far wrong, actually, because what is being asked of Derek is the one part of him he’s never wanted to change, the one part of himself he will always hold onto dearly. It’s who he is and he wouldn’t consider giving it up ever. Not even for a second.

Except that he is, and that scares him more than he’s willing to admit. ‘You want to make me human?’ he asks, and it comes out before he even has a handle on the words, let alone the concept.

‘I can’t use your human side,’ says the King. ‘It’s a ruin. It won’t suit any purpose of mine. But the wolf in you is strong, and fierce, and because it was born as part of you it’s not – what’s that word you used again? Perverted?’

Derek lets out a warning growl, and an instant later he’s got Peter at his side, and isn’t that strange. He doesn’t know if Peter is the angel or the devil on his shoulder, but there’s a firm hand gripping at his arm and warm breath in his ear. And Peter says, ‘I don’t think this is wise, nephew.’

He hates when Peter calls him that. Nephew. Like he resents Derek for having taken the alpha title away from him. Derek doesn’t like Peter anymore, wonders how he can still love him despite himself. But he keeps him around because he wants to keep an eye on his uncle, and maybe because he doesn’t like the idea of Peter being on his own like Derek was. There’s nothing worse than being an omega, than slipping to the bottom of the food chain. Nothing quite as scary, quite as heart wrenching. No one deserves that, even Peter, even after he killed Laura.

He turns to Peter, his expression carefully blank. Looks at him as if to ask if Peter has another suggestion. And he does.

‘It’s truly a tragic loss, having Stiles taken under these circumstances. It is. But think about your pack, Derek,’ says Peter, calm and slow, even as the King looks on with derision. ‘They rely on you. I rely on you. This pack is so young, in its early days, but it could be what it was. We can make the Hale name great again. If you give that up now there’s no way the pack will be able to stay together. Who would take your place? Scott?’ At Scott’s name Derek senses the wave of panic that comes over the boy, and the uncertainty that he shares. Peter catches all that too, presses in with his words twisted by the smile on his face. ‘God love the kid, but he’s just a boy. He doesn’t know what we know. Hasn’t seen what we’ve seen. Hasn’t lived through what we’ve lived through – our family, the fire, Kate.’

Kate. 

Derek hasn’t thought about Kate in any way but passing in a solid week, and all of a sudden he’s flooded with guilt. All of a sudden he can smell her again, the way she smelled when she kissed him in her car, her perfume heavy and her hands raw like she’d washes them too many times. He can see her blonde hair curled around his fingers and the way she’d arched up into him, can taste the coffee on her breath, feel her nails scratching down his back, the steel in her eyes when he’d seen her from far away as they were leaving town. He’d been so fucking selfish, and because of it he’d lost everyone he cared about.

He’s not going to be that kind of alpha, he decides. He’s not going to be selfish so he can have what he wants, not if it’s at the risk of losing those that rely on him. And, okay, he’ll lose all of them this way, because he won’t be the alpha anymore, but at least he’ll know they’ll still be alive, still be okay. They’ll probably be better off without him and his crippling fears and his inability to be anything but nasty at his worst and socially awkward at best. They need kindness and support and friendship and they had all those things with each other before Derek even stepped into the picture. He’s just a sofa and a shitty futon. He’s a meeting place and another reason to gripe. He brought the fire, and he brought Scott’s hesitation, and Allison’s hatred. He made the kanima. He called the alpha pack to town and ran his own betas out. It’s the right thing to do. Peter will understand one day.

‘For Stiles,’ says Derek, choking back his nerves, ‘I’ll do it.’

The pack erupts into sound. Erica springs forward, teeth and claws and whipping blonde hair. Scott is right behind her, screaming his indignation. Isaac looks frightened and confused, Boyd looks torn, Jackson is hiding back in the brush of the trees, but his frown is apparent. Derek is suddenly furious at him, wants to toss him to the ground and humiliate him for all of this. He wants to make Jackson submit with pinprick teeth at his throat. He wants to offer his idiot beta in exchange, because Stiles did nothing to deserve this horror, and Jackson should have known better than to say what he did in a town like Beacon Hills.

Derek roars. The forest falls silent. The Goblin King’s smile is broad and unwavering. His minions titter in the trees.

‘I’ll do it,’ says Derek again, and holds out his hand to the King.

‘No!’ cries Erica, exasperated. She clings to Derek’s arm. ‘Derek, please –’

‘I’ve made my decision,’ growls Derek in warning. He shakes her off, hard and brutal, but he can’t get Peter to let him go, ends up twisting himself awkwardly just so he can get enough space to breathe. ‘We owe him,’ he says, more quietly this time. ‘He’s done so much for us, even when he didn’t want to. He’s saved all of us and – and he’s human, unlike most of us. He’s pack. So I think it’s about time we made sacrifices for him too.’

The Goblin King looks positively blissful. ‘A most moving speech, werewolf! And so valiant. We have a deal, then: your wolf for the boy.’ He holds out his hand, long, curling fingers unfurling.

Derek takes it in his grasp and wishes that he never did.


	2. The Change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the wonderful feedback - just for you (and because there is far too much I want to touch on in this story) this story is now going to be twice as long as I originally planned. Yay for extendable plot bunnies!

If he was waiting for an upgrade, it doesn’t come.

Scott’s not sure if he is or he isn’t, but he can remember when the change had happened to Derek, not all that long ago, and it was like a shifting in the air, a shifting of Derek’s heart beat. It was a feeling, low in his belly, his gut clenching, and he knew, even filled with horror, and anger, and everything he connected with Allison and her family, what it was. But it doesn’t come.

He realises, too, that he’s waiting for something particularly climactic. A big finale to the sealing of the deal. Maybe it’s because he watches too much TV or something, but he’s expecting – well, not fireworks, but a little soul tearing, perhaps. Derek on his knees in agony as he’s made human, screaming NO! to the heavens. The Goblin King’s manic laughter. Some howling at the moon, maybe. Dramatic lighting, at least. Instead it’s just Derek, mouth a grim line, half shifted, with his hand thrust out, and the Goblin King unfurling. They shake hands. Derek gasps. His teeth are blunt again, his nails stubs, his eyes grey green, and something with reflective red eyes is sitting in the Goblin King’s shadow.

Scott’s kept one eye on that shadow all evening. There is some seriously trippy magic going on with that thing, because it’s too big to belong to a waifish creature like the King. And things – goblins, Scott assumes, because he’s never seen a goblin before, but what else can it be? – keep crawling out of it like it’s a hole in the ground, and when they escape into the swell of the forest, hiding in shadows as thick as tar, Scott can see their button hole eyes blinking back at him. He can hear them shift, too, like leaves rustling, but sharper, sort of crispy. Once or twice he can hear them titter, and it sounds like pop rocks bursting.

When the deal is done all the goblins’ gazes turn to their King, turn to the thing at his feet, and lean in, bend towards it. It’s a dark swath of fur and bristle, a lump of coal that’s only as tall as knee-height. At first it’s not much at all, but then it’s folding itself out, and Scott makes out arching claws and a slender tail and flicking ears. A wolf, long muzzle lined with snapping teeth, eyes the colour of blood. It seems to grow as the spark in Derek fades. Before too long – before much at all, really – it’s waist-height, and a beautiful creature. It’s coiled with tension, teeth bared, and it looks on Derek like it doesn’t recognise him.

Derek holds fast, but Scott can hear his heart beat jackhammering inside his ribcage, can smell the fear and sorrow coming off him in thick waves. After a long moment, where he only stares at the manifestation of the thing that lived inside him, Derek turns his gaze back to the King.

‘We had a bargain,’ he says, and it’s still sharp, but the growl that used to be there is gone.

The Goblin King’s eyes are on Derek, but his hand is reaching out to the wolf. His fingers curl into the thick fur at the nape of the wolf’s neck, and hold fast. Derek’s breathing grows ragged.

‘Indeed,’ says the King. ‘He’s waiting for you.’

There’s a beat as the words sink in, and then Erica’s pulling away, her eyes dancing around the trees. Jackson glances towards Scott and then away again. Isaac takes a couple of steps back, and shares a confused look with Boyd. Scott takes a deep breath, searching for his best friend’s scent, but he can’t find it. The Goblin King is gone, like that, like he was never there. He leaves no trail behind, no evidence of his presence. The eyes in the forest have all blinked out. The wolf has gone with him.

Derek slumps heavily against his uncle, who takes his weight easily, and doesn’t move again.

‘Stiles?’ yells Scott. He stares into the dark, and even though his senses are good, he’s not picking up on anything. There are animals rustling in the undergrowth. There’s an owl hunting somewhere to his left. The trees are whipping with the wind. But nothing sounds like Stiles’ heartbeat, and nothing smells like Stiles smells, and nothing sounds like Stiles tripping over his own flat feet. Scott starts to think that he’s not coming back at all, that they’ve been had, and that sends him panicking wildly. 

‘Stiles!?’ he calls again, and it comes out cracked and urgent. He can feel Peter eyeing him from across the clearing, even with his arm around Derek’s shoulders.

‘Maybe he’s back at Derek’s,’ suggests Jackson from behind him.

Scott whips around to stare openly at Jackson. ‘Derek’s?’ he barks. ‘Why would he be at Derek’s?’

Jackson has the balls to roll his eyes at Scott, and if Scott wasn’t in full-on panic mode he’d probably be urged to sucker punch the guy. ‘Because that’s the last place he was –’

‘He could be anywhere,’ cuts in Erica, shrugging.

‘We should go look for him,’ presses Jackson, already fishing for his keys in his pocket. He turns to go back the way they came. ‘Everyone back to Derek’s place.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ spits Isaac. ‘What if he’s not there? We’d cover much more ground if we split up.’

‘Fine,’ snaps Jackson, his glare withering. ‘But you’re not taking my car.’

‘Who made you the boss, anyway?’ grinds Boyd all of a sudden. And he’s right, but Scott’s too busy tugging at his hair and trying to think of what to tell the Sheriff to back him.

‘I certainly don’t remember voting him in,’ agrees Erica, bristling by Boyd’s side. ‘What if I don’t think Stiles is there?’

Jackson suddenly looks like he’s about to explode. Scott would step in, usually, but his best friend is now missing and unfortunately is the self-dubbed Giles of the gang, so he’s also the one Scott would probably look at should they land themselves in a missing person situation. There’s also Derek, too, being alpha and all, but – but he’s not their alpha anymore. Is he?

Is he?

‘I was trying,’ snarls Jackson, ‘to make this all a little easier. You know, since Derek is down for the count.’ He waves towards Derek, and that’s when everyone seems to remember that Peter’s still standing there, cool as you like, waiting for the pack to get their shit together.

‘If I may,’ he says, eyes dancing from beta to beta. He shifts a little under Derek’s weight, and then fixes his gaze on Jackson. ‘There’s already two of us in line for alpha, Jackson.’ And suddenly it’s a power display, because his eyes are flashing and his teeth are growing, and rather than letting Derek lean all of his weight on Peter, Peter’s picked his nephew up with one arm. His voice becomes a dangerous growl. ‘Do yourself a favour and _shut your mouth before I do it for you_.’

And then someone’s roaring, and everyone’s turning to look at Scott, and, oh, it was him. Scott may be having some form of brain shut down right now, so he’s not entirely sure what he’s doing, but he’s dimly aware in a wolfy instincts kind of way that Peter is a threat and that if Scott doesn’t switch back on pretty quick he’s going to be a threat in a leader of the pack kind of way. And Scott’s not sure he’s keen on that, and even more certain that Stiles won’t like it either. So he thinks to himself, what would he do if this was Allison, because that always makes his brain tick twice as fast, and then suddenly he knows.

‘We’ll split up,’ he says. ‘We’ll cover more ground that way. Erica’s right – just because Derek’s house was the last place we saw him doesn’t mean it’s the only place he’ll be.’ He turns to Jackson, then, who’s glaring, but Scott’s not going to comment because they don’t have the time. ‘Jackson, you check out Derek’s place, and if he’s not there, the school.’

Jackson nods, although his face is still sour, but then he’s off at a sprint back towards the road, and no one seems to be complaining that Scott’s taken charge – even Peter – so he moves on to Isaac. He pulls his keys out of his pocket and hands them over, his fingers around one in particular. ‘This is the back door key for Stiles’ place; I don’t know if he left his bedroom window open, but I’m pretty sure his dad’s on patrol. Take my car, and if he’s not there swing by my house too. My mum is home, so you should probably let her know what’s going on. She’ll know what to do.’

Isaac swings forward, easy, and claps a hand on Scott’s shoulder. It’s a comfort, and Scott smiles automatically in thanks. It’s been surprisingly easy with Isaac. Has been for a while – at least once he moved past that I’m the Big Man on Campus thing he was doing when he was first turned. Plus, Scott knows for a fact that tracking is one of Isaac’s strong points. So if anyone can guarantee Stiles’ safe return, it’s him.

‘Erica,’ says Scott, turning again as Isaac makes his leave, ‘Boyd: do a quick sweep of the forest. Focus on our territory, and where the forest meets the edge of town.’

‘Want us to check the old house too?’ asks Erica.

Scott shakes his head. ‘I’ll do that.’

And then it’s just Scott, Derek and Peter. And it’s been a little over a year since Peter pulled the ultimate Houdini and came back from the dead, and he’s proven himself time and time again – proven his loyalty to Derek and the pack by being a source of information, a guide, by helping sway the alpha pack into leaving. If there’s a word that could be used to describe the guy it’s “exemplary”. But he still sets Scott’s teeth on edge, just like he did Derek’s. So the minute they’re alone the tension starts to build between them, and Peter looks perfectly content to let it happen. Scott doesn’t know what to do, so he settles on glaring.

Oddly enough, it’s Peter that breaks.

He’s wearing that smirk of his, that one like he’s seen it all before. ‘Nicely done,’ he says. ‘You’re going to make an excellent leader one day. Maybe even an alpha, if you play your cards right. Of course, you and I both know that I’m not going to just let you steal my title like that, but –’

‘Wait,’ begs Scott between gritted teeth. ‘If you want to fight me, then fine. But please, just wait until we’ve founds Stiles.’

Peter pauses, his face considering. But then he nods. ‘Of course. I’m a reasonable man,’ he says, and something about it echoes what the Goblin King said, so it feels all kinds of wrong. But it’s better than nothing. ‘I think,’ he adds, hoisting Derek a little higher so it comes out a grunt, ‘we should get my nephew sorted out before I try to rip your throat out, no?’

Scott nods. ‘Take him to Deaton.’

‘My thoughts exactly.’

‘I’ll meet you there when I’m done.’

And they part like equals: Peter with Derek slung over his shoulder and side, Scott in the opposite direction towards the house. Scott knows it’s not going to last long, that Peter is only biding his time, but at least he’ll have the time to make sure his best friend is safe before the onslaught.

-

There’s a heartbeat in the Hale house. It’s strong and slow and calm, and the instant Scott picks up on it he takes off at a run.

He finds himself yelling Stiles’ name before he even clears the trees, and he can hear the way the heartbeat picks up when Stiles hears him, and the flurry of movement from one of the front rooms as the house comes into sight. He sees Stiles through the window, face lit up with excitement, and then they’re racing towards each other and Stiles collapses on him in a flurry of windmilling arms. ‘Dude,’ breathes Scott. ‘Dude, it’s so good to see you.’

Stiles is hugging Scott like his life depends on it, but after a long moment he pulls away, and he looks sad and confused. ‘Please tell me you didn’t make some deal with the Goblin King to find me in the labyrinth. I’ve been here long enough, buddy, and I really don’t think your werewolf senses are going to help us out of this one unless you know a princess with a ball of string.’

‘What?’ says Scott, and then he realises, Stiles doesn’t know. He has no idea where he is. He’s been in the Goblin King’s thrall for half the night, and he’s so confused he doesn’t even know Beacon Hills when he sees it. Scott feels a stab in his gut at the thought. What did they even do to him?

‘It’s a reference,’ Stiles rambles on, as if nothing’s wrong at all. ‘The ball of string? It’s from Greek mythology – you know, Theseus in the labyrinth with the Minotaur, because he doesn’t know how to get out of the labyrinth, so this princess Ariadne gives him a ball of string so that he can –’

‘Stiles,’ Scott says, slow and careful, hands on Stiles’ shoulders, ‘you’re home. You’re in Beacon Hills.’

Stiles has Excitedly Tell Scott All the Things face on even as he’s cut off short, but the instant Scott says anything it slides right off and lands in a heap at his feet. Scott is overwhelmed with Stiles’ panic, and fear, and sorrow, and then Stiles is stumbling back until he’s pressed against the wood of the house’s front door.

‘ _No_ ,’ he groans, his face in his hands, ‘ _no, please, not again_.’ Stiles slides down until he’s hunched in this half-crouch, curled into himself, and Scott smells the salt of tears even before Stiles gives an injured sniff. ‘I’m being punished,’ he gulps through his fingers, ‘aren’t I?’ He looks up at Scott then, his face already ruddy with crying. ‘This is the Goblin King playing some sick game, isn’t it? Well I won’t do this again! I won’t!’

‘No!’ Scott cries. He takes a handful of steps forward, but stops dead when Stiles flinches away. ‘No, Stiles, it’s me. It’s Scott. We rescued you. You’re home!’  
Stiles sniffs again, shoots him a bitter glance.

‘Derek made a deal,’ says Scott. ‘The Goblin King made him human and he gave you back.’

Stiles snorts derisively at that. ‘Yeah, because Derek is so self-sacrificing that he’d do something like that for me.’

‘No,’ pleads Scott, ‘but he did! And now everyone’s out looking for you and –’ he whines, drops down onto his knees so they’re eye to eye. ‘Stiles, why don’t you believe me?’

Stiles’ lips are wobbling, but he juts his chin out defiantly like only he could. ‘You know,’ he says, a little wet, ‘I thought it couldn’t get any worse than seeing my mum again, but apparently –’

‘You saw your mum?’ says Scott, barely a whisper, and Stiles’ face just crumples again. Scott wants so badly to reach out and hug him, but he knows Stiles won’t let him, and it kills him a little bit. He’s about ready to start panicking again when everything goes weirdly clear and he’s thinking about something Stiles said to him once, about how to prove their identity if they were ever cloned and their evil twin tried to take over. Which is a weird thing to be thinking about at a time like this, but oddly convenient, because it gives him an idea.

‘I’ll prove it,’ Scott says, determined. He shuffles forward a little, and Stiles glances up, confused. ‘I’ll prove to you it’s really me,’ and this time he can’t help but grin because he knows this is going to work. ‘I’ll tell you something that only you and I ever knew, because then you’ll know it’s me.’

Stiles looks dubious, but there’s hope there, too, sketched out and shiny on his face. Scott wracks his brains for inspiration.

‘Oh! So, the night I got bitten we were out in the woods looking for Laura Hale’s dead – and other people know that. Okay. You helped to control my shifting by keying that guy’s car! Which… the guy… you know, this isn’t working.’

Stiles’ face falls.

‘It’s okay!’ Scott cries, backpedalling furiously. ‘It’s okay, I can do this! I promise. Um…’ He glances around, wildly searching for inspiration. This is not the sort of thing he would have thought he’d ever need to think about. Plus there’s not a whole lot he hasn’t told Allison, or there weren’t other people around at school for. Big things like him becoming a werewolf and events unfolding around that are pretty much public knowledge to the pack, and before that the only really big events in their lives were Scott’s dad leaving and Stiles’ mum dying. And Allison, but it’s not like –

‘Last week I called out your name in bed!’ cries Scott.

He realises, perhaps a bit too late, that not only is Stiles not going to know that, but it’s not the kind of thing you admit to, you know, _anyone_. And it’s not like it was that big a deal – after he convinced Allison he wasn’t gay or in love with his best friend, anyway. It was just that he was supposed to be at Stiles’ place studying for a biology quiz, and he’d dropped by Allison’s after school to say hello, and then one thing had lead to another and there was nakedness and mutual orgasms and Scott was a little distracted and Allison’s mouth was in a very private place when he realised all of a sudden that he was supposed to be somewhere completely different and then he was shouting his best friend’s name as he came down his girlfriend’s throat. It was completely innocent. And she’d said later, between fits of giggles, anyway, that it happened to the best of people. 

Stiles’ mouth flaps open and shut for several moments as they both process what is probably the most awkward admission Scott has ever made. After a moment, however, he clears this throat, and says, ‘That’s nice, dude, and I’m flattered, I guess, but really not helping.’

‘Sorry,’ mumbles Scott.

‘S’fine,’ says Stiles. ‘You just might want to keep that secret to yourself, is all.’

And, _oh_ , Scott is officially the world’s slowest potato ever, because why didn’t he think of that before? It’s obvious. They have years and years of history and it all comes down to: ‘Do you remember the first time you slept over at my house?’ asks Scott, and for the first time the tense line of Stiles’ shoulders seems to droop, relax just a fraction. ‘You’d never been to a sleepover before, and you insisted that for it to be a real sleepover we had to tell each other secrets in the dark after we went to bed.’

A grin splits Stiles’ face, and if Scott ever knew he was on the right path, now is it.

‘We were just being stupid at first, making things up to make each other laugh. You said the word “ducks” over and over again until I fell out of bed laughing.’

‘I remember,’ says Stiles.

‘And then I told you how I could hear my mum and dad fighting sometimes, and you got really quiet.’ Scott reaches out, absently, and his fingers guide themselves around Stiles’ wrist. Stiles doesn’t move, but Scott can feel the beat of his pulse under his fingers, and it matches the ease he can hear as the panic slides away. ‘And then you said, “I’ve never had a best friend before,” and I told you that you had me.’

Stiles rocks forward so his head crashes into Scott’s shoulder, and Scott catches him with his free hand and hugs him tight. He can feel Stiles melting, his muscles, cemented tight in fear thawing, his bones liquidising until he’s clutching at Scott’s shirt and just breathing. Scott thinks absently that he should do the ring around, get Isaac or Jackson to come back and pick them up, but Stiles is shaking with relief against him, and Scott wants to tear apart the Goblin Kingdom for what they did to his best friend.

-

In the car on the way to Deaton’s practice, Stiles suddenly goes into panic mode.

Isaac is driving, and Scott is sitting in the front, Stiles in the seat behind him. Stiles had insisted that he was okay, he was okay enough to be on his own, but they have to drive past the station on the way to see Deaton, and Stiles sees it and his heart goes wild, beating out of his chest. Scott’s half-shifted before he can even think, is so keyed up over Stiles’ return.

‘We have to tell my dad I’m back,’ says Stiles, and it comes out surprised, and if Scott didn’t know better he’d think Stiles was angry at himself for some reason. ‘We have to – he’s probably going insane with worry.’ His hands are in his hair, gripping tight, and he starts shifting restlessly, and not in the way he does when he hasn’t taken his medication yet and he can’t focus straight.

‘I thought you said he was working the late shift tonight,’ says Isaac, frowning.

Stiles tears his eyes up to the rear view mirror, where he catches Isaac’s gaze for the moment before Isaac’s eyes are back on the road. Stiles’ face goes oddly slack, and then Scott can see the cogs ticking over in his head, can see the way he’s fitting pieces of the puzzle together like he was missing something before that he has now.

‘How long was I gone for?’ he asks finally, eyes directed at Scott.

Scott shakes his head. ‘Four hours, maybe? Why?’

Stiles shrugs, face closed over. ‘It was longer where I was.’

‘How much longer?’

He shrugs again. ‘A month, I think. Maybe more, but I lost count.’

And the pieces that are falling into place are horrible broken shards, and they sting and bite even as Scott starts putting more of it back together.

-

Dr Deaton has his unhappy face on. Scott knows, from experience, that it looks like most of his other faces: calm, placid, ice popsicle cool. His heart beat is even and steady. His words are collected, well put together. The man is a walking enigma. But there’s a tick at the corner of his mouth, this little flinty spark that Scott’s picked up on for as long as he’s been working at the vet clinic, and it means that even if Deaton isn’t yelling or sniping or throwing things, that he’s very much less than pleased to be dragged to his place of business late on a Saturday night. And Scott, as an occasional glorified shit shoveler, is going to be doing the worst of the crappy jobs for every shift until Deaton has deemed his punishment met.

Sometimes Scott wishes he had a boss that wasn’t quite as mysterious and creepy, and was more like Finstock. The lacrosse coach is odd, no questions asked, but at least he’s predictable in his oddities. The Independence Day speech as motivation. Inventive suicide drills. Insults that constantly involve comparisons to his frail, possibly deceased grandmother. And it’s easy enough to tell when the guy is ticked at you, where as Dr Deaton is cruel and twisted and makes his own fun. If it weren’t for the fact that he has a soft spot for Derek and the pack, and Scott trusts him to within an inch of his life, he would probably think that Alan Deaton is evil.

When they arrive at the clinic, Derek is on an exam table, his face in Dr Deaton’s hands. Peter is standing by the door like a smarmy security guard, his arms crossed, his face closed over. Jackson, Allison, Danny and Lydia are crowded around the door, none of them brave enough to cross Derek’s uncle. Erica and Boyd are still on their way.

Scott kisses Allison hello before he shoos the pack off towards the kitchenette out the back. He knows there’s only tea and coffee there, and possibly no milk, and possibly green things growing in the fridge (the cleaning out of which will, undoubtedly, be one of the first things on the list of his punishments to make up for tonight), but then at least there’s enough room for him to get in and around Peter and help where he can. This place is sort of his territory. Sort of Isaac’s too. So he doesn’t care for the way Peter glares across the room at him, and doesn’t mind in the slightest if he lets his chest puff up, just a little bit.

Isaac is standing steadfast next to Stiles, who is holding back, and looks ready to pass out from exhaustion. He’s quiet, which is scary, and statue-still, which is even scarier. Normally he’s butting in and making noise and insisting on playing nurse maid, learning as much as he can about spells and magic and werewolf healing like he’s a watcher in training. Or breaking something – there is not a glass jar that isn’t threatened with doom when Stiles is near. But instead Stiles is just standing there, hands in his hoodie pockets, leaning towards Isaac, who’s leaning back towards him. He blinks blearily at Scott.

‘Scott,’ says the doctor. He takes a step back and folds his arms, still looking at Derek like the Sudoku puzzles he does on his lunch break. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine,’ says Scott. ‘We found Stiles.’

‘I see.’ Deaton turns to face Stiles, then, through the door, his eyebrows lifted. ‘Are you alright? Any negative effects from the pandimensional travel?’

‘Huh?’ says Stiles, but his attention is on Derek. That’s when Scott actually starts paying attention to his – well, his ex-alpha, although frankly referring to him as that feels disrespectful. Derek looks wrecked, all kinds of messed up. He’s pale, and sweating, his hair a fuzzy birds nest, his shoulders slumped. But he’s just… sitting there. Just sitting there on the shiny exam table, his mouth hanging open, his eyes glazed over and gazing into the middle distance. His heart is beating, sluggish but nothing too concerning, and he’s breathing, a constant in out through his nose. He’s functioning in all the ways he needs to be alive. But he’s not… he’s not there. He’s empty. Hollow.

‘Is he okay?’ asks Isaac quietly from his place by the door. He takes a couple of steps into the room, past Peter, but Scott puts his hand out and he pauses, head cocked in concern.

Deaton takes Derek’s wrist to feel out a pulse – possibly as an automatic response, because he knows every werewolf in the building would know the instant his heart gave. ‘Physically, I can’t really find anything wrong with him. He’s not injured, and the spell cast on him that made him human hasn’t left any physical damage. But mentally, as far as I can tell, he’s in a stupor. Possibly catatonic; I’d guess it’s some sort of post traumatic stress.’ Deaton hums to himself, seemingly happy by Derek’s vital signs, and sets Derek’s hand down on his knee. He takes a step back, meets Isaac’s concerned look. ‘I’m a veterinarian, though, so I’m not trained for this. He needs to be taken to a hospital.’

‘But you’re a doctor,’ insists Isaac. ‘You fix werewolves.’

Deaton nods. ‘I do. I know a lot about mystical anomalies, and I’m happy to help under the circumstances. Don’t get me wrong, Isaac. But the spell cast on him hasn’t injured him or harmed him in anyway, and he’s not a werewolf anymore. He’s just human.’

‘Is there anything we can do?’ comes a voice near the door, and Scott has been so distracted he completely forgot Peter. He doesn’t jump, but he shoots Peter a glance, one that Peter blissfully ignores. He wanders forward, too, and puts a hand on top of Derek’s head, in contrition, maybe, or out of familial love. It’s an odd gesture, but it looks genuine.

‘I’ve never dealt with the Goblin King before,’ says Deaton. ‘Only read about him, and very little at that. It seems… strange, perhaps, that he would have any interest in trading an innocent child for the manifestation of a werewolf’s soul, but I’d imagine he’d have his reasons. It seems very unlikely he’d be willing to trade anything for it.’ He pauses, and takes a moment to look from Scott to Peter and back again, calculating. ‘You could,’ he says finally, ‘turn him again, give him the bite if he wants to be a werewolf. However, there’s no guaranteeing that it wouldn’t kill him.’

‘We’d need an alpha for that,’ says Scott, and it comes out all kinds of bitter, and he knows Peter picks up from it by the way his mouth quirks. ‘We’ve been left without a predecessor.’

‘That’s a big word, Scott,’ says Stiles, suddenly cheeky. It comes out flat, though, and Scott can hear the exhaustion in his voice. When Stiles strolls in he does so with an odd roll to his step, like he might launch himself into somersaults. It’s a kind of jerking flail that he normally gets after staying up until four in the morning on nothing but Red Bull and Aderall for a week straight. ‘Hey, buddy,’ he says, and stops by Derek, in front of Peter, ‘I am about to fall asleep on my feet. Think we can leave this for another night when Sleeping Beauty here is awake and singing?’ He pats Derek on the knee, a jerky brush of fingers.

Derek jolts. Stiles flails back.

And like that, he’s not empty anymore. Derek’s back, there’s life inside his head, swimming in his eyes. His face flickers through half a million emotions, one after the other in rapid succession, and they each get worse and worse if the way his heart is fluttering is any indication. An instant later Derek is fleeing the scene, no longer able to rely on his werewolf powers to speed him out of the room, but forced on by what must be fear and confusion and a whole bunch of other things. He leaves the door swinging back and forth behind him.


	3. The Secret Keeper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An enormous shout out to Heather, who yelled at me until I stopped procrastinating and started writing, and then, like the true superstar she is, came to my aid and helped me break the Stilinskis.

Derek seeks him out is later that night, when Stiles is half awake and doesn’t realise what Derek’s looking for.

It’s three in the morning. Stiles keeps jolting awake out of habit at the smallest things, so when there’s the click of fingernails against his bedroom window, he sits up straight, heartbeat hammering against his ribcage. Derek is on the other side, clinging to the window sill desperately, feet slipping on the roof tiles.

Stiles stumbles out of bed and to his feet with a lack of grace akin to the undead, and is so incompetent for a moment that he has to lean against the pane of glass just to make sure he can stand. He’s not had to jump up like that in a while, because in the labyrinth he barely slept, and the lack of sleeping isn’t exactly helping either. Derek seems to find it amusing, though, if the muffled snort Stiles hears is any indication.

When he’s firmly on his feet, Stiles yanks his window open. Derek grabs him, a litany of help me help me help mes falling from his mouth in a slur. Stiles holds Derek by his wrists, and Derek does the same for Stiles, and then Stiles starts walking backwards, taking all of Derek’s weight as he does – and Derek is all muscle so there’s quite a bit there – until he can slump, for the most part, onto solid ground. He sits, then, in a puddle of himself on Stiles’ bedroom floor, in dirty jeans and his leather jacket, and lilts dangerously from side to side. 

‘Holy God,’ breathes Stiles. ‘You’re drunk.’

Derek shoots him a sloppy glare. ‘So what?’ he says. ‘It’s legal. I can do it if I want to.’

Stiles glances back towards his bedroom door. His dad will be home in a couple of hours, so it’s not like he’ll know, but he still feels like he’s breaking all the rules by having Derek Hale in his house, in his bedroom, whether he’s drunk off his arse or not. ‘What are you doing here?’ he presses, hissing, and offers Derek his hands for a hoist up.

Derek stares at Stiles’ left hand, like it’s offending him, and only gets the hint when Stiles uses it to tug at Derek’s arm. ‘You know, I’ve been drunk before,’ he adds, like proof. ‘When I turned eighteen, Laura bought me two bottles of whiskey, and we sat in the living room in our apartment and downed them before dinner. I don’t remember feeling like this, though.’

He’s on his knees now, horribly lopsided and noodle-limbed like a rag doll in Stiles’ grasp. He lets himself sprawl, falling face-first into Stiles’ crotch. Stiles yelps and stumbles back, catching Derek under his arms before Derek loses the lot and they have to start again from step one.

‘Yeah,’ grunts Stiles under Derek’s weight, ‘well, the werewolf metabolism will do that to you. Lucky for you, being a human means – here, put your arms around my shoulders -- my _shoulders_ , Derek – you can receive the full effects of alcohol with half the money! Although I hear it’s hell on your liver – come here!’

With some effort he’s managed to get Derek as close to standing as is likely possible. Derek is draped over him, knees bent, his arms thrown over Stiles’ shoulders and his face buried in Stiles’ neck. Stiles can feel Derek mouthing wetly at the junction between his neck and shoulder, but he’s not sure if it’s because Derek is trying to say something or because he’s a tactile drunk. He can’t imagine Derek as the type to go out to a club somewhere and wind up making out with random strangers and grinding on the dance floor after a few too many. He would have though Derek was a drowning his sorrows at a seedy bar kind of guy. A playing pool at the dive bar full of bikers and cigarette smoke kind of guy. The fact that Derek’s shown up in this state at all even suggests that.

Stiles shuffles sideways, fingers digging into the back of Derek’s jacket, until he can pour Derek onto his bed. Derek lands heavily, arms and legs jangling, and sits quite contentedly with his mouth slippery with spit and his expression dark. ‘Are you okay?’ he asks, quietly.

‘Oh yeah,’ laughs Stiles, ‘because you’re the poster boy for people who are –’

That’s when Stiles notices Derek’s knees. They’re skinned bloody, jeans torn, the scratches deep enough to sting badly. With further inspection, after manhandling Derek out of his jacket, at least, Stiles finds bloody knuckles, too, the palms of his hands red-raw. ‘What happened?’ he asks, dropping down to his knees.

Derek leans forward, and he smells like tequila. ‘I tried to climb up your trellis. I needed to see you. Why do you care?’ It ends in a scowl, but the lisp from drinking mostly makes it sound like a petulant whine. Stiles realises that there’s no way Derek’s getting home to his apartment tonight.

‘Stay here,’ he instructs, getting to his feet. Derek sways back, blinks up at Stiles owlishly. ‘I’m getting a first aid kit. Don’t do anything stupid.’

When he comes back Derek is lying on his back, legs dangling over the side of the bed, and his jeans are half-undone. His fingers keep grasping with the button, but Derek’s far too clumsy to manage to unclasp it, and Stiles watches him for a moment, uncertain as to what exactly is going on. He makes himself known, finally, when Derek gives a grunt in protest, and starts tugging at the waist like he’s going to roll them right down his hips.

‘What are you doing?’ he asks.

Derek huffs, flings his arms wildly. ‘Helping,’ he grumbles. ‘Have you slept in a pair of jeans before? It’s unbearable.’

‘Who said anything about sleeping?’ replies Stiles, and sets the first aid kit down to Derek’s left. ‘If you’re taking your pants off, it’s so I can patch up your knees.’

Derek glares up at him. ‘They’ll heal.’

‘They won’t if they’re full of splinters,’ spits Stiles. ‘Now, am I bandaging them or not?’

There’s a moment where Derek glowers at Stiles, grouchy. Then he says, smirking and proud, ‘You just want to see me naked, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ replies Stiles in monotone, sarcasm rife in every syllable. ‘Yes, that’s it exactly. Oh, Derek, all I want in this world is to get your drunk arse abs of steel into my bed.’

‘I knew it!’ crows Derek. He pushes himself up to sitting, one arm waving at Stiles with pointed finger. ‘I knew you had the hots for me, I could tell. You always smell like arousal around me, and you have that fucking oral fixation, and I know you liked that Lydia chick but I bet she never pushed to up against a wall and heard the way your heartbeat went wild when she breathed down your neck.’

Stiles’ gut plummets. He stares at Derek with his mouth hanging open and he feels sick and angry and disgusted. He’s spent the last month in hell and had three showers to get the smell of goblin off his skin, and now he feels like he needs to shower all over again. His stomach twists, and his face becomes an ugly sneer, because fuck Derek. Derek doesn’t know shit about Stiles. Derek can’t make some selfless sacrifice and then just lord it over Stiles like Stiles owes him. That’s not okay.

‘Alright,’ grinds Stiles, ‘fuck you, buddy. I’ve had it with your shit.’ He’s got his phone off his night stand in a second and starts scrolling through his contacts, looking for Peter’s number, before anything else can be said.

‘What are you doing?’ asks Derek.

‘Calling your uncle,’ replies Stiles, aloof, and hits the call button.

The colour drains out of Derek’s face. The smug expression that he had on before suddenly becomes a mask of fear and panic and it’s so pathetic that Stiles has ended the call even before Derek starts pleading for him not to. ‘No, no, don’t,’ begs Derek, grubby hands grabbing at Stiles’ t-shirt. He looks terrified. He’s never let himself look scared in front of Stiles – not when he was shot with wolfsbane bullets and asking Stiles to hack his arm off, not when they were trapped in a swimming pool for two hours, Derek paralysed by the kanima’s venom as it waited, stalking, not even when they thought the alpha pack was going to kill them. ‘Please don’t call him, I can’t see him tonight, I can’t, _my pack can’t see me like this_.’

Stiles suddenly feels like the world’s most giant arsehole, because he gets a whole lot what Derek’s talking about right there. He sighs, resigned, and tosses his phone towards the head of the bed. It lands on his pillow and doesn’t move again, the screen dimming.

See, the thing is – the thing is that Stiles never noticed how bright his world is. How painful it is to stare at the sun. But after weeks in an endless Labyrinth, after hedgerow after hedgerow after hedgerow, coming home is like stepping out of a dark room into the afternoon sunshine. It’s magnificent, but it’s also a little blinding. And seeing Scott there first, before anything else, it didn’t feel real, feel right. So he thought it was like every other head trip from the inside and for a while there he was panicking, scared shitless that he’d completely lost it and was seeing the Hale house on top of all the people that he cared about.

_…his father, smelling like brandy, crying quietly in his good suit…_

_..Lydia, eyes bright, leading him like the white rabbit down the rabbit hole, around twists and turns and through tunnels but never catching her eye…_

_..his mum, hidden behind every corner, her laughter fading away, slipping just out of his reach…_

Stiles slumps down next to Derek. He doesn’t want to see anyone else tonight, either. The idea of wallowing in his misery is somewhat tempting. Getting drunk in the process is a thought that also occurs to him.

‘Wanna stay the night?’ he asks.

Derek is watching him with a careful expression, the lull in his movements almost hypnotic. For a minute Stiles just gets lost in watching his head tick over, watching the cogs shift and turn under his skull. He gets caught up in Derek’s eyes, not in a romantic way, but in the way where he can fixate on things for hours and hours, study every facet in them. Stiles thought they were dark – brown, or maybe hazel, to match his dark hair – but actually, they’re sort of green, with these bursts of gold around the iris, and flecks and bluey-grey. They’re so beautiful, in a completely aesthetic way, and if Stiles were a painter he would insist that Derek sit still so he could paint every one of those colours.

‘Thanks,’ says Derek, and the moment is gone so fast that Stiles reels back, has to fix his face to smile broadly. It’s too sharp, though, and it hangs off at the wrong angle, and _bedding_ , Stiles realises, with mild horror. Where the hell is he going to put Derek?

Derek is, in his inebriated state, quite content to lie in a nest of pillows and blankets on Stiles’ floor, so long as he can leave his jeans and shoes in a pile on Stiles’ desk chair, it’s okay, Stiles, I’ll just leave them here, don’t look at me while I’m changing Stiles, I am taking off my pants now Stiles, I’m going to take them off and leave them on your desk chair – is that okay? Okay, I’ll just take my jeans off and leave them here.

They move around each other in a manner that’s oddly domestic, Stiles finding as many spare pillows as he can manage, Derek brushing his teeth in the upstairs bathroom in his t-shirt and underwear, his knees covered in plasters, and then the pair of them curling up in their respective beds in the dark. Stiles is just drifting off to sleep when it occurs to him, in the way you always get brilliant ideas right as you’re drifting off, that technically, he’s pack too. He’s used to Derek growling and flashing his alpha eyes and he doesn’t know this Derek, this human Derek who doesn’t even know himself, and who got wasted on his first night as a human because of that. So that’s…

That’s probably something for another night when Derek is sober and can look him in the eye.

-

Stiles is woken at eight o’clock on Sunday morning to a chorus of retching coming from the upstairs bathroom. He lies in bed for a solid minute just listening, his brain swimming in and out of focus, before it occurs to him that someone is heaving up their breakfast before breakfast time. And then that Derek stayed the night last night.

He’s on his feet in an instant, terrified his dad is going to find out.

It’s too late, though. Because as soon as Stiles stumbles out into the hallway he runs into his dad, an odd frown on his face, leaning against the bathroom doorway with a glass of water in his hands. Beyond the sheriff, in the bathroom, Derek moans out the pangs of his hangover. For a minute Stiles and his father share an awkward staring contest, like they’re both waiting for the other to crack under pressure, his father shouting about wanted criminals and my son and owning a gun and using that gun and grounded forever, Stiles about not what it looks like and he’s not a wanted criminal so much as a person of interest and it’s not like you didn’t know I hang out with Derek Hale because we both know you’re not blind or stupid. But then Derek chimes in with a well-placed groan, and Stiles’ dad is doing the fatherly thing, chuckling humourlessly as he goes, and putting the glass on the floor next to the toilet. Derek rests his forehead against the toilet seat and murmurs a thank you.

‘I must say,’ says the sheriff, as casual as you like, ‘I didn’t expect to be woken so early by something like this. Mind, I also expected it to be my underage son.’ He says that word, “underage”, like he’s suspects Derek of something. Buying Stiles alcohol, or regularly going down on him, perhaps.

‘I’m sorry he woke you,’ says Stiles, trying for casual and missing it by about three states. ‘He climbed in through my bedroom window. I couldn’t exactly turn him away.’

‘You know, Derek,’ says the sheriff, and oh Jesus, they’re going to do this, aren’t they? They’re going to do the Pretend Stiles Isn’t in the Room thing and follow it closely with the Sheriff thing. ‘My son may be a – mostly – responsible and practical young man, but his age makes him somewhat influential, particularly to people he thinks are cool.’

‘Dad,’ Stiles butts in, and touches his father’s elbow. ‘It’s fine.’

He gets a warning glance for that, but Stiles knows exactly what this is, and it’s exactly the opposite of what Derek deserves. The Sheriff thinks he’s warding his young and innocent son away from some vicious, über-sexualised criminal. He thinks he’s doing the right thing, but he doesn’t understand, he couldn’t possibly. So Stiles risks his own neck by butting in again.

‘Dad,’ he presses, ‘seriously. It was an accident – let it go.’

The sheriff looks like he’s ready to blow Stiles out of the water for interrupting the start of a world class interrogation, but beyond him Derek looks somewhat relieved. So Stiles takes it in his stride, even as his father excuses the pair of them, even as he’s directed away to the master bedroom, even as his father turns on him, eyes full of confusion and disappointment. And that’s when it all comes crumbling down around Stiles’ knees.

Oh, shit. The Look.

There has never been a period of time in Stiles’ life that he’s received it so often as the time since he dragged Scott out into the woods and got him bitten. Currently, Stiles is receiving The Look on an almost weekly basis, given how often he has to sneak out unsuspected or lie to his father’s face to protect the integrity of the pack or pretend that everything between them is fine. It cuts Stiles deep to bleeding every time he gets that look, because it just reminds him of all the stupid shit he’s pulled before, and maybe also of all the heart problems his dad is living with, and one plus one is surely going to equal an early grave for the sheriff. It also makes Stiles wonder if the ache of his chest, the swoop and tug of his family being shredded like so much paper, and of knowing that every yank of his heartstrings is another day sooner his father will find his end, is even worth keeping the big secret. If maybe the telling of it will bring just a fraction of relief, a little room to gasp in breath.

But then Stiles remembers that his father is the Sheriff of Beacon Hills. He wears a badge and a gun and resolve like a mask and every day he risks his life so Stiles can screw around and then screw up and still be able to dig himself out in the end. Knowing that werewolves exist, Stiles imagines with great horror, would be the final nail in his father’s coffin. It would kill him, and there is nothing Stiles fears more than that. Not even The Look.

Stiles squares his shoulders and waits for the tidal wave of his father’s rage to come crashing down on his head.

‘I’m woken up this morning barely a couple of hours after I managed to get off to sleep,’ stars his dad, ‘to find _Derek Hale_ camped out in my bathroom –’

‘Dad, it’s not what it looks like.’

It’s an automatic response, the first in a series of them, and his father just pushes past it like it’s not even a barrier. It’s not, not really. It’s a molehill that never does look like the mountain that it feels like it should be.

His father’s face is pinched. ‘And what does it look like, Stiles?’ he asks, shutting the door behind them so Derek can’t overhear. ‘Tell me what this scene is supposed to look like to me.’

Stiles shrugs. He considers lying for a second, but then he knows his father will see right through it, because nothing is going to sound even remotely close to the truth. Even the truth sounds a little ridiculous. ‘He was drunk, Dad, and he climbed through my window looking for company. I couldn’t exactly turn him away.’  
‘Looking for company?’

And that’s – _that’s_ –

That might have actually taken his father by surprise. The whole coming out thing six months ago seemed to throw his dad like it was way out in left of field. And yeah, okay, even Stiles hadn’t seen it coming before it hit him smack in the face, the fact that he could feel anything for anyone that wasn’t Lydia Martin, especially an anyone with a P instead of a V. But the whole process of coming out had been kind of… anticlimactic. Which was nice, really, if not a little concerning, the way his dad had spent quite a bit of time understanding that being bisexual didn’t mean Stiles was sexually attracted to everything that moves and so kept making faces like, Are you attracted to this person that you’ve known all your life and think is kind of skeevy? Because I’m proud of you no matter whose junk you want to stick in your mouth. Still, they haven’t discussed it in ages – probably because there’s not a lot to talk about – but now it sounds like his dad thinks – his dad thinks Derek – that _Stiles and Derek_ –

Oh, sweet mother of Zeus.

‘Oh, come on,’ sputters Stiles, ‘you know what I mean. He just – he’s going through some stuff, and we have surprisingly a lot in common of late –’

‘He’s a _criminal_ , Stiles,’ says his father, and like Stiles didn’t see that coming. He even has the balls to roll his eyes.

‘He’s a person of interest, and technically that’s Scott’s fault.’

And apparently that argument isn’t going to cut it anymore, either.

‘Look,’ says Stiles, aiming for calming, ‘he’s a little rough around the edges, admittedly, but he’s not a bad guy, Dad, not when it counts. And – and I owe him.’

His dad goes quiet. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, when his dad gets real quiet, whether he’s angry or just plain resigned. His face gets closed off, shuts down and won’t let anything in. He did it a lot when Stiles’ mum was first diagnosed. Stiles would catch him when he thought no one was looking, sitting with that look on his face like his whole thought process was rebooting. Like he was as simple as a computer, just a bunch of wires wrapped around a mainframe, and his software needed installing. And then, when he was done, he would swell to bursting like an overripe balloon, or sag like he could concave.

When he talks finally, his voice is rough, desperate, and it stings to aching like Stiles has been dragged underwater and can’t find the surface to rake air into his lungs.

‘I’ve spent a year – a solid year – thinking that this was a phase running its course. You’ve been staying out past curfew, especially on nights when I’m not home; don’t think I don’t know, you’ve been hanging out with people who are known publicly to be dangerous, you’ve been pulling stupid stunts like the one that cost me my job –’

‘– Dad,’ Stiles gasps, pleading, ‘I didn’t mean for that to –’

His father talks over him, voice growing thicker with roiling anger. ‘– you keep showing up at crime scenes with no reason to be there and no excuse for your presence, and it feels like once a week you come home beaten black and blue.’ He stops abruptly, and turns his face up to meet Stiles’ gaze. Stiles wants so badly to look away, but he knows that he can’t, that he shouldn’t. It’s like a horror movie, like he can see the last straws his father is desperately clinging to, and as much as he wants to turn away he keeps staring out through his fingers, waiting for the kill. ‘What’s going on with you, Stiles? This isn’t you.’

Stiles thinks about the labyrinth. He thinks about the never ending hedge maze, and how, just like his life, he’s left with nothing but parting glances, with mis-recalled memories that weigh down in his chest. He thinks about how he’s stuck inside it and he can’t get free, no matter how far he runs in any direction. He can never tell his dad the truth, and it’s always going to hurt as bad as this.

‘Things happen,’ Stiles spits. ‘People change.’

It only acts to rile his father up, even in his pyjamas, standing at the foot of his own bed. The sheriff’s hands find Stiles’ shoulders, and he leans in close, but it’s like desperate searching with the way he’s growling in Stiles’ face. ‘That’s no excuse. You _need_ to stop lying to me.’

Stiles shucks his father’s grasp, and throws his arms out angrily. ‘I’m a teenager, Dad!’ he yells back, because all he can do now is break his dad’s heart completely to save him. ‘What do you want, for me to tell you everything? Because it’s not going to happen.’

‘Fine, Stiles.’ His father shakes his head. ‘I thought you’d be responsible enough to let me into your life once in a while, but if you’re going to act like a brat then I’m going to treat you like one too.’ He puffs up then, like he’s preparing himself for the final blow, and then he says, ‘You’re banned from seeing Derek Hale.’  
Stiles gapes. ‘What?!’

‘You get him what he needs this morning – let him get the alcohol out of his system – but then you frog march him to the front door and you never see him again.’ His father points towards the hall, to where Derek must be able to hear, even with his human ears, even through the door, what is in fact the final nail in Stiles’ metaphorical coffin.

‘You can’t do that!’ Stiles shrieks.

‘I’m your father, Stiles,’ his dad barks, ‘and I’m telling you that this stops now. You keep pushing me, and I’ll take more.’

Stiles can feel his breathing ragged in his chest. He can feel his heart beating way too fast. Because he’s too involved now, and even if he can’t tell his dad why everything is different, he can’t just let the man snap his fingers and expect everything to go back to normal. And it makes him boil with rage, writhe inside his head because it’s so fucking unfair, it’s fucking unjust. You can’t ban a person from making friends. You can’t spend time and effort building up a relationship and then let it smash itself to pieces on the rocks. That’s not how it works. ‘Do it, then!’ Stiles screams. ‘Don’t just threaten to do it, go put bars on my bedroom window! Put a padlock on my door! Have a security guard tail me at all hours during school – and drive my jeep, since I can’t be trusted not to make a stop off at Dairy Queen on my way home.’

‘Stiles –’

‘You know what? Let’s just ban me from leaving the house at all! If you home school me there’s no chance that I’ll have the opportunity to make _dangerous criminal friends_ –’ 

‘Stiles, _stop_.’

Stiles gasps for air like a fish dragged out of the ocean. There are tears streaming down his face and he feels like he might die, like the world wouldn’t think for a second to swallow him whole and instead leave him wheezing a slow and painful death, on a dock somewhere, flapping limply. His father is frowning, hands out in front of him, palm up like he’s proving that he’s unarmed. He wavers, for a moment, like he might reach out, but if he touches Stiles, Stiles will scream, will be sick.

He waits until Stiles’ breathing returns to normal, until Stiles clothes his mouth, his teeth clicking audibly. And then he sits down on his bed, limbs swinging loose like he’s been stretched too far so the joints have all dislocated. He hangs, shoulders slumped, dripping exhaustion onto the carpeted floor. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Stiles,’ his dad says, his voice shattered, ‘I’m tired. I’m tired of you lying and I’m tired of having to clean up the messes you keep making. I try to support you, but I don’t understand what you’re doing and I…’ For a moment he wavers, lips pressed tight together, and Stiles know where his father’s headed before the M word even comes out. ‘With your mum gone,’ (and oh, God, there it is, and even now it’s shiny sharp and it hurts the most out of everything) ‘I can’t be around all the time to save you when you screw up. If you keep this up, one day I won’t be.’

Stiles won’t meet his gaze. He can’t do it. He can’t. His father waits, and Stiles stares at his bare feet before the long, worn out sigh.

‘I’m going to go back to bed,’ says his dad, ‘because I have to be at work in nine hours. But tomorrow you’re going to come straight home after school, and we’re going to sit down and talk this through. And you’re going to be honest with me Stiles. I can’t bear to hear you lying to me anymore. Is that clear?’

As crystal, thinks Stiles, and suddenly he’s exhausted too, and all he wants to do is sleep this away. Act like it never happened. That the issue is dealt with and he can just get on with pretending everything is okay, even when it isn’t. It’s the Stilinski way, after all.

He leaves without giving his answer, has to pause in the hallway because Derek is staring at him with wide eyes from the bathroom door.

‘You need to go,’ Stiles chokes out.

‘Are you okay?’ asks Derek, his voice hoarse from dry reaching. He reaches out and his fingers glance over Stiles’ arm.

The camel’s back snaps under the pressure, and suddenly Stiles is roaring, is digging his fingers into Derek’s shirt and hurling him across the bathroom, is bellowing at the top of his lungs, is slamming his bedroom door shut and throwing himself down on his bed. If Derek leaves afterward, Stiles certainly doesn’t hear him.


	4. The Hangover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An enormous thankyou to [Heather](http://wordsonastick.tumblr.com/) for her amazing nagging abilities and her quick and dirty beta job. This chapter probably would have killed me without her cheering me on.

Derek gets a week to avoid the pack before Boyd comes to kick his arse. He’s surprised, actually. Surprised that it’s Boyd, and surprised that they give him so long, surprised how easy it is for him to accept, not even begrudgingly, that enough is enough.

He’s living in the depot again, because there’s not really anywhere else to go. He doesn’t trust that no one will come snooping at the old house, especially given what it means to Derek, and he knows that he can’t go home because Peter and Isaac are there, they live there. So he wastes away in his lonely old hole, mattress stuffed into a train car, bottles of alcohol slowly but surely lining up along the other wall. He’s gathered quite the collection when Boyd walks in, shoulders squared, head high, eyes squinting at Derek, dirty and wasted.

‘You smell like something died,’ Boyd grunts, and he cocks an eyebrow, folds his arms. He looks so contrite, so unimpressed. It suits him.

‘You’ve never smelled dying things before,’ slurs Derek. ‘You have no idea how I smell.’

Boyd frowns at that. Maybe before it would have sent a shot of guilt through Derek, but he isn’t interested in reading too much into anything anymore. He always ends up putting the blame on himself and there is no point doing that now since he’s given up on being in charge. Nothing can be his fault now he’s stepped down from the leader position. He doesn’t care, doesn’t have enough in himself to. Instead he’s decided to be stoic and unimpressed and drunk. He’s at least got two of the three down, so he’s getting there.

‘Are you here to sober me up, then?’ he asks, pushing himself up onto his elbows from where he’s sprawled across the filthy mattress. His head spins uneasily and Boyd’s face twists in his vision.

‘Yes,’ says Boyd, and then clambers forward and yanks Derek’s ankles so he goes sliding towards Boyd and the bedding bunches up underneath him. ‘Can you stand?’

‘No,’ says Derek.

‘Then I’ll carry you.’

‘No,’ says Derek.

Derek is by no means a small man, but Boyd is bigger. He’s also werewolf strong, and Derek is also drunk, so Derek is like a rag doll, or probably more like a sack of potatoes, and Boyd has Derek flopped over his shoulder in no time at all. Upside down, Derek suddenly feels like he could quite easily purge all the poison in his system, and on Boyd’s jeans. He tells Boyd as much, groggy and whining, as Boyd carries him towards the depot’s tiny bathroom.

‘Go ahead,’ replies Boyd drily. He mounts the stairs with ease, his breathing steady. Derek is reminded of how he can’t hear Boyd’s heartbeat anymore, a steady murmur like a drum beat through a closed door, and hates how very ordinary he now is. He feels wrong without strength underneath him, without the wolf curled around his chest. He feels sort of hollow and pointless. He doesn’t understand how anyone can go without what he had.

He finds himself rambling the sentiments into Boyd’s denim-clad backside. He’s not good with the words, and putting them together, but in his blurry mind the words come out in a jumble that almost makes sense. He talks with cracked voice and broken heart about how his senses are dull, how he feels like his head is packed tight with cotton wool, the listless ordinary caked in so tight that he’s not just swimming with it but jammed full, overstuffed. The world feels dull and grey without the wolf to burn in him. Derek is jaded, used, constantly exhausted and hungry and aching and tired. His heart beats so much harder just to press through the buzz of being locked away behind his cloudy senses. When he runs too hard he can feel it not just beating but thudding like it wants to break the doors down, and it goes on and on even when he controls his breathing, even when he sits still and holds his breath to feel the way it slows, momentarily, and his head tingles with the lack of oxygen.

‘I miss that part,’ says Boyd suddenly, out of the swell of Derek’s words. He puts Derek down on the bathroom floor, slumped against the far wall, and then sets to work starting the rusted out shower. The tiles are slippery with soap scum, Derek knows, but Boyd has grace that comes with his werewolf reflexes, so he doesn’t fall. He turns the taps, and the pipes rattle dangerously before water comes gushing. Boyd stands back to avoid the lousy spray, and then turns back to Derek. He’s still talking as he wanders forward, pushing his leather jacket off his shoulders to rest over the nearby sink. ‘I can hear too much with my ears. I overhear conversations I don’t want to, intimate situations, my lunch digesting.’ He makes a face at that, and Derek would laugh if he didn’t feel like his insides are struggling to jump out his mouth. ‘I miss the way my heart used to sound so loud in my ears when it ran fast.’

‘You were always so calm,’ says Derek.

A flash of a grin shoots across Boyd’s face, and then he stoops to pick Derek up again. He catches Derek around his waist and hauls him up, not even grunting from the weight. ‘You were always so stoic. I don’t think I’ve heard you say so much to me my whole life, other than barking orders. Heads up: it’s cold.’

And then he dumps Derek on his arse in the shower, and the water is like fucking icicles raining down on his head. Derek howls, scrabbling up the wall with frozen fingers, before he slips and knocks his head against the tiles as he lands. After that he just sits in the sting of cold, glaring at Boyd, who is enjoying himself far too much if the smirk of his face means what Derek thinks it does. (It does.) His hair plasters to his head, and his clothes get heavy and waterlogged and cold, and eventually the water than runs from underneath him gets grubby from the dirt and sweat and filth on his skin. Before too long he finds himself shaking with the temperature, a physical response that only used to happen when he was a child and ran around in the snow in bare feet before his mother would pounce on him with boots and mittens. She’d say, ‘You’ll lose all your toes in the winter, little man,’ and Derek would guffaw and reply, ‘They’ll grow back.’

Derek is swimming in the haze of his poisoned head when Boyd strips down to his underwear and jumps in with him. Boyd doesn’t say anything, but manoeuvres Derek like a mannequin in a shop window, pushing and pulling until he can strip Derek of his clothes. Derek would protest, or offer to help, but he can’t get his balance. He feels like his head has lost the remote control for his body and he doesn’t have any power anymore in the way he moves, or doesn’t. So he sprawls against Boyd and lets himself be disrobed, slowly but surely, sodden shirt and heavy jeans and then sits in his boxer briefs and dirty feet. His skin has gone numb with the cold and he’s not sure if he’s shaking anymore. His vision is blurry from the way the water keeps running into his eyes. His stomach is churning dangerously.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ he mumbles into his own chest. When he rolls his head back he sees Boyd, standing back, arms crossed, squinting at him again.

‘The drain is right there,’ says Boyd, a lilt of amusement in his voice.

Derek can’t reach that far. ‘I’m going to be sick on myself,’ he clarifies.

‘Lucky you’re in a shower then,’ replies Boyd. A moment later there’s the shrill sound of Boyd’s ring tone. Even on the quietest setting (it’s a werewolf thing), swaddled in Boyd’s pile of clothing, it sounds like a foghorn blearing inside Derek’s head, and he finds himself wincing, rolling away sideways to get away from it. Boyd chuckles and bends to dig through his pockets. ‘Better now than never,’ he continues, chuckling, and then presses the phone to his ear. ‘Erica, I’ve found him. He’s in the depot.’

-

Erica brings a new set of clothes that smell like home and a styrofoam cup of horribly burned black coffee. One thing leads to another, most of which he doesn’t focus on, and somehow Derek finds himself in this little diner in town that he hasn’t eaten at since approximately freshman year of high school. He has a splitting headache and the smell of cooking food is making his stomach roil, frothing angrily at him even though it’s empty of anything.

Derek had spent countless minutes hacking up bile before they could get him dressed and into Erica’s dad’s car. It was not the most pleasant experience, and no, he doesn’t feel anywhere near better for it. But Erica had described in great detail on the drive as to how they were going to drag Derek back into society kicking and screaming until he decided to, quote, ‘stop being an unbearable turkey,’ unquote, and then added that he would eat hangover food until he threw up from overeating as a first step.

Hence the large assortment of breakfast foods being delivered in a steady stream to their table.

There’s toast, and a stack of pancakes, and poached, scrambled, and fried eggs. There’s a plate of bacon, a plate of sausage links, a plate of fried tomatoes. There’s two fleshy pink grapefruit halves, and three different breakfast muffins, and a sticky apricot Danish, and banana bread, and what appears to be a BLT. There are three large mugs of coffee, and a glass of orange juice, and a small pot of tea. And Boyd claims to have already eaten.

Derek glares across at Erica, who is pulling apart a croissant with delicate fingers, and Boyd, who seems content to sip his hot coffee and watch. The waitress, a disapproving woman who still, for some reason, refers to everyone as sweetheart, delivers a plate of French toast, and Derek decides that enough is very much enough.

‘What are you doing?’ he grunts, hands squarely in his lap.

Erica smiles innocently and reaches into the hidden pocket in her leather jacket. ‘We’re not doing anything,’ she replies, coy, and then produces a credit card – Derek’s credit card – and drops it onto the table.

Derek would care that he’s wasting money on a banquet of food he’d barely be able to conquer with his old werewolf metabolism, but finds himself too nauseated to do anything but glare. It only seems to fuel the fire, and Erica licks her buttery fingers, flippant, before starting the inevitable tirade.

‘The pack is in ruins,’ she begins, her eyes on her plate. She’s aiming for casual, but there’s a steel in her voice that sounds sharp and jagged. ‘Peter and Scott have been circling each other for a solid week now, and we’re nowhere closer to replacing you. We’re exposed like this, at risk of being attacked or falling apart.’

Derek feels a stab through his gut at the word “replacing”. He hadn’t ever thought about it in that way before, but this is what is happening. They’re replacing him. They’ve ditched Alpha 1.0 and are on the prowl for version two. They don’t need him.

‘We’re here to ask you for help,’ adds Boyd.

Yeah, thinks Derek, because I’m going to help you look for my replacement. ‘And if I don’t?’ he asks.

Boyd looks momentarily hurt, but that steel in Erica’s glance sparks again, the gold in her eyes flashing fierce. From her oversized handbag under the table she drags out her laptop, and then starts again as she boots up the machine. She talks like she’s daring Derek to just try her, just see what she can do. ‘If you don’t,’ she snaps, ‘we’ll leave. For real this time, none of that coming back with our tails between our legs bullshit. I’ve been doing my research, finding contacts online. Making friends with people like us.’

Derek feels his gut drop out from under him at that. _The nerve._ The fucking nerve to think that all along she’d been finding an out, like she didn’t even trust Derek all this time, like she was just waiting for the moment everything went to shit so she could pack her bags and leave a trail of dust behind her. ‘You went to _another alpha_ behind my back?’ whispers Derek, and he’s so angry that he could clear the table with a swipe of his arm and watch plates of food crash spectacularly to the floor.

Erica flinches, old instincts kicking in at the spike of anger she can sense in Derek (and Derek is fucking pleased at that, because how could she?), but then she glares, squares her shoulders, and goes for the death blow. ‘Not until you abandoned us. Again.’

The anger falls off Derek in sheets. He feels overexposed at the way they’re looking at him, like maybe he can give a better explanation than “I did this for the good of the pack and one day you’ll understand.” Back when he was a werewolf and he spoke mostly in actions he could reply to a line like that with a show of dominance, a well-placed growl and a flash of teeth. But he’s stripped bare now, and so there’s nothing he can do but curl into himself.

Boyd clears his throat. ‘The point is,’ he says, voice low as he plays group mediator, ‘Erica’s found a pack just out of Jacksonville that takes in underage omegas looking for the safety of a pack. They don’t judge, they’ll provide us with food and shelter and jobs if we want them.’

Erica makes a noise in the back of her throat that translates to sticking her tongue out and blowing raspberries, and then she swivels the laptop around so Derek can read the screen. She’s logged into her email account, and there’s an email there from someone called Neil Doherty. The name sounds scarily familiar, and in an incredibly unsettling way. In a way that screams trap in big neon letters.

‘We’ll be able to finish school,’ says Erica, like she’s read this out of a brochure, ‘and they’ll put us in touch with other packs if we want to go somewhere else for college. And we’ll always be welcome there.’

Derek wants to say something. He wants to say something to convince Erica that leaving is the wrong choice, that this is dangerous and risky when she doesn’t even know for certain if this Doherty guy is someone he can trust with his betas.

Ex-betas.

But that’s beside the point.

He wishes he could use the words the same way Stiles can, that he can shape them the way images form in his head, but he was never good with his mouth. Talking always felt wrong, felt like he was switching off his head when he could always express everything he needed with actions so much better. He can’t paint a picture of apology for Erica, and when he reaches for something – anything – to ease all the hurt he’s created he comes up blank. All he manages is, ‘Don’t,’ small and pathetic, and he hates that it’s the best he can do.

Erica snorts, derisive. ‘Oh, because you’ve given us so much choice.’

‘You’re running away again,’ snaps Derek. ‘You’re throwing everything away on a whim and –’

‘And it’s exactly the thing my alpha did,’ replies Erica, whip fast and brittle. She glares down Derek, and he can’t find it within himself to meet her eyes. Because she’s right.

He’s got nothing to say to that. There isn’t anything he could say, even if he wanted to. So he sits, staring at the oozing square of butter slowly disappearing into nothing on top of a stack of cooling pancakes and lets Erica leave with little more than the direction to Boyd that she’ll be waiting in the car. Boyd doesn’t say anything, and Derek concentrates on the churning of his stomach instead of the intense silence.

‘I get it,’ says Boyd, after a long, long time. ‘What you did.’

Derek looks up, and Boyd pulls his chair out from underneath himself, stands opposite Derek with an unreadable expression on his face.

‘Stiles is pack,’ says Boyd, simply. ‘An alpha does what he has to, to protect his pack, even if that means sacrificing himself.’

Derek nods, a little surprised at how okay Boyd seems to be with his point of view. But then again, this is Boyd, the level-headed one.

‘You’re not dead, Derek.’ Continues Boyd. ‘So…’ he shrugs, ‘you’re still pack. To me, and Erica, and all the others.’

‘So then why are you leaving?’

Boyd shrugs again, and it is easy for him, which Derek can’t even fathom. Boyd has this all figured out, in black and white, and Derek has been wallowing this whole time, fighting with himself over his decision. But Boyd just knows, just gets it, like he said. This is simple for him. ‘There’s no pack without you,’ he says. ‘And if there’s no pack, then there’s no reason to stay.’

-

He goes home because he has to. Isaac still leaves his wet towels on his bathroom floor and Peter still finishes boxes of food and then puts the packaging back in the cupboards empty. Nothing is different and everything has changed, and it just feels wrong from start to finish.

Derek stays in his room until everyone starts to get that he’s not interested in pack meetings anymore. It only takes a couple of days of people coming around and waiting for him for hours at a time before it starts to sink in.

-

There is no new alpha.

-

There is no pack.

-

Derek is napping when Stiles comes around for the first time since he was spirited away. He leans on the buzzer until Derek has no choice to pick up, and then insists in that way he does that Derek let him in, no matter how many times Derek tells Stiles that Isaac is at the vet clinic with Scott. Eventually Derek lets him in, but then Stiles stands by the front door like his feet are rooted to the spot, like this was a bad idea.

Derek stares. He stares because firstly, Stiles looks worse than Derek looks. He looks like he hasn’t slept properly in months, has lost so much weight he’s just skin and bones. There’s an ugly wrinkle between his eyebrows that’s developed from the permanent frown on his face, and oh, yeah, he’s frowning. He looks so uncomfortable that it makes Derek want to squirm just from looking at him.

‘Thanks for letting me in, man,’ he says, and digs his hands into his pockets. ‘Did I come at a bad time?’

He didn’t, but Derek is more focussed on Stiles than explaining away a cat nap. ‘Isaac told me you were grounded,’ he says, scratching the back of his head.

Stiles nods. No story, no list of reasons. He just nods. There is something horribly wrong with this picture.

‘Oh,’ says Derek.

‘It’s for a month, so…’ Stiles shrugs, lost for words. ‘Dad will ease up eventually, though. He was never very good at grounding. I think it’s cause I drive him insane. I mean, you should have seen me before the Adderall.’

Derek nods. Now that the words are flowing things almost feel normal, and he doesn’t want to spoil that. It still feels stilted, though. Kind of forced. He feels weird about how things ended on Sunday, about the conversation he wasn’t supposed to overhear but did anyway. He knows it was his fault that Stiles and his dad had that argument, because he shouldn’t have just rocked up to the sheriff’s house and expected to be treated like… like a friend? 

He realises, suddenly, that neither he nor Stiles have said anything for near a minute. Derek then realises, even more belatedly, that social etiquette suggests he’s the one that’s supposed to take the initiative to continue the conversation. He winces apologetically, but Stiles’ mouth is still the tense line it was when Derek let him in.

‘So,’ says Derek, for the lack of anything else to say, ‘your movies are all still here by the way –’

‘You can have them,’ cuts in Stiles, shuddering. ‘I’ve lost my appetite for Muppets.’

Of course, thinks Derek. Most people don’t want to be reminded of their traumatic experiences by way of cult classic DVDs. Most people don’t sit in the burned out shell of their childhood home as punishment.

‘So, anyway,’ says Stiles, a fraction too loud, his eyes firmly on his sneakers, ‘I can’t stay long, because my dad will find out through his scary sheriff connections, and if he finds out that I’ve broken house arrest then my life is basically forfeit. Not that it is house arrest – or, well, it sort of is, I mean, I’m grounded. But it’s not breaking the law –’

‘Stiles, what are you doing here?’

Derek feels like a giant dick bag for that, but Stiles’ endless rambling is even more grating than the short sentences and awkward pauses. Everything is wrong between them; the camaraderie they shared, the backwards flirting where Derek would growl and flash his red alpha eyes just to catch the delicious jump in Stiles’ pulse is gone. It’s like neither of them fit the parts they’ve made for themselves anymore and are left in uncomfortable poses, trying and failing to mold themselves to something they can’t fit into.

‘Fine,’ spits Stiles, shifting restlessly. ‘Fine. You’re really no good at small talk, are you?’

Well, duh.

Stiles takes a huge, gulping breath. What comes out of his mouth next is an endless sprawling string, a paragraph sewn into one long, unending word like he’s practiced saying it over and over so that it comes out like the whole makes no sense, has no meaning anymore. ‘I’m sorry I took my anger out on you last week. I acted like a -’ pause, and the look on his face is like what he’s going to say is the most humiliating thing to ever come out of his gob, ‘- _brat_ -’ and yes, in fact, it is, ‘- and my actions were uncalled for –’

‘Stiles,’ splutters Derek, because he’s not sure if he wants to laugh or cry, ‘you don’t have to –’

‘Shut up and let me finish, dude!’ snaps Stiles. He waves his hands at Derek exasperatedly. ‘Dad made me memorise this to prove I’d say it all to you.’

Oh. Well, that makes a whole bunch more sense, then.

Stiles takes another breath. ‘I acted like a brat and my actions were uncalled for, but I’ve since learned my lesson and have been sufficiently punished. I hope you can find it within you to forgive me, although I know that what I do has consequences, and I will understand if you were hurt either mentally or physically and wish to end our friendship because of how I treated you.’ He pauses, and then he smirks, and if Derek wasn’t looking for it he would miss the way it sits on his face, the way for a split second it’s real. ‘I think that last part was attempted wish fulfilment on my dad’s part, really.’

‘He made you memorise all of that?’

Stiles nods, and the smile that comes this time is real, so much so that Derek feels himself deflate with ease, just a fraction. ‘Ah huh. Left a typed up copy stuck on the fridge door so it’d mock me every time I’d go to get a fudgesicle. Oh, by the way, if you could call him to let him know I stopped by and did the apology monologue to you, it’d make my home life a lot less like Communist China.’

Derek nods, feels the air clear spectacularly. ‘Sure,’ he says, and wonders just how much the sheriff could tell about their friendship when he wandered in on Derek hacking up his insides that morning.

‘I am sorry, for the record,’ says Stiles. ‘For pushing you like that.’

It’s already forgotten, thinks Derek. He should be the one apologising, for making Stiles’ life the kind where he doesn’t eat or sleep and he tells so many lies. Is this what pack life was like for him? ‘It’s okay,’ says Derek, because nothing else he could say would make total sense. If he were to open his mouth and let it all out, it would be these fractured pieces and Derek’s holding that all too tight to let go right now. He’s just happy that something, one little thing, is alright.

Stiles apparently takes the pause in conversation as his cue to leave. He shuffles backwards, just a fraction, dipping his head towards the door. ‘I should go,’ he says.

Derek’s not finished, though.

It’s been bugging him since he woke up in Dr Deaton’s clinic to the sight of Stiles looking ragged and hollow and forced. And he’d tried, that night when he clambered up the rose trellis and into Stiles’ bedroom, to ask, but Stiles didn’t understand, or he didn’t… didn’t want to reply, maybe. Hadn’t processed it all yet. There’s still the urge there, even as a human, to protect Stiles. Because Stiles is Derek’s friend. Derek hasn’t had a real one of those in far too long, and he likes the idea of it, of trusting someone that much. Stiles doesn’t take his shit, like Laura never did. And yeah, he’s mouthy and loud and he has this whole façade of being careless and stupid, but he’s also brave and bold and he sees so much that Derek just looks right past. Laura would have liked him. Laura would have pushed for them to be friends. So Derek feels like he should be looking out for Stiles, because Stiles is important. To Derek. Derek likes him.

Oh, Jesus, this is getting out of hand.

‘What did you see in the labyrinth?’ he asks. It doesn’t come out cautious or in the right flow. It doesn’t feel natural at all. But direct is something Derek can do, so he does.

It doesn’t elicit the response Derek was expecting. He was, at worst, expecting a heaved sigh and an eye roll. The request to keep his nose out of other people’s business. He was expecting some resistance, definitely. But instead his blunt force just goes to break the bridge they’d just pieced together, because Stiles is pissed. Stiles is really angry. The line of his shoulders goes hard and his face scrunches up on itself. He jerks to a halt by the door, mouth pinched and tight.

‘Why do you care so much?’

Derek shrugs. ‘Anything’s a distraction from –’

It’s not what he means. It comes out so wrong, and fucking hell, this is why Derek was never good with the word stuff. This is the reason he skulks about the place, huffing and puffing and not talking about shit like his feelings. The instant he opens his mouth this shit comes out, and the words are all fucking wrong, they don’t mean what he wants them to, and it just makes everything worse.

‘Oh, because I’m such a fucking tragedy,’ spits Stiles, flinging an angry arm in Derek’s direction. He’s all bite and bile, dripping sarcasm and hurt. ‘Because, what, I’m the comic relief that distracts you from your hell? Poor Stiles!’ he cries, his voice rising. ‘The girl of his dreams thought so little of him that she chose a lizard monster over him! He’s just a weakling human that can’t help but get himself caught like a damsel in distress. He’ll probably lose his virginity to a pity fuck at a party in grad school. Well laugh it up, arsehole,’ and here Derek shrinks back into himself, eyes on the carpet, unable to even meet the point of Stiles’ angry finger let alone the broken look on Stiles’ face, ‘because from where I’m standing, your life is pretty pathetic too. Do you know what’s been going on with the pack since you traded in your title for me? No, because you abandoned your betas and left them to rot. There’s no alpha now, no one to keep them in line. The pack is falling apart, and, newsflash: that’s on you.’

Derek glances up at that. ‘I saved you, Stiles,’ he says.

‘Yeah, by making a stupid arse deal before thinking through the consequences. This pack is constantly walking on eggshells, and you think stepping down as alpha and leaving them without a leader isn’t going to affect that?’ He’s bellowing now, and he keeps jabbing forward at Derek, poking with his fingers, snapping with his teeth, until he’s right up in Derek’s space. ‘Jackson keeps trying to take charge, until Peter knocks him back and he skulks away, promising revenge. Peter is stalking Scott, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce and take his title as alpha. I’m pretty sure he’d be willing to kill Scott – I mean, considering what he did to Laura. Scott is so distracted over whether he’d rather be leader of the pack or married to his high school sweetheart to keep tabs on Peter or even notice that his best friend’s life is in pieces. Isaac is torn between following Scott to the ends of the earth in an epic bromance or leaving town with Erica and Boyd to find another pack – oh yeah, and Erica and Boyd are leaving. Again.’

I know, Derek wants to say. No one will let me forget it, he wants to say. Instead what comes out is, ‘Your life is in pieces?’It’s small and confused and Derek realises, as he’s saying it, that it’s the thing he cares about the most.

Stiles is incredulous. ‘Did – did you just hear a word I said?’

‘I heard everything you said, Stiles,’ replies Derek, and he shoves as much confidence into it as he can. He takes a leaf out of Boyd’s book, breaks it down to its simplest so that Stiles will get it. ‘I’m not alpha anymore. I’m not even a werewolf. The pack isn’t my problem.’

‘But I am?’

Stiles is so close their toes are almost touching. He blushes bright, brilliant pink, across the tops of his cheeks, the tips of his ears, and it strikes Derek that Stiles is kind of gorgeous. His eyes are wide and his mouth is half open and he’s wearing the most ridiculous t-shirt Derek’s ever had the grace of reading, and he’s still angry, and Derek is in awe of how brilliant Stiles really is. 

‘I brought you back, didn’t I?’ he says. It has far too much meaning behind it.

Stiles’ blush deepens.


End file.
